It is the established law of England, that a counsellor or barrister cannot maintain a suit for his fees.[36] There is in that country a class of mere attorneys, who attend to legal business out of court, who bring suits and conduct them up to issue; but who are not allowed to speak in court. This latter privilege is confined to serjeants and barristers. Attorneys are regulated by statute, and are subject to many restrictions; having a rate of fees, settled either by statute or established usage; and required to be fixed by the taxation of an officer of the court before a suit can be brought for them. Barristers are admitted only under the regulations established by the various inns of court; and the serjeants, who long had the monopoly of the Bar of the Common Pleas, are appointed by patent from the king. A barrister cannot be an attorney.[37] In this country, there is in general no distinction between attorneys and counsellors. The same persons fulfil the duties of both. Hence no difference is made between their right to recover compensation for services in the one capacity or the other.[38] In Pennsylvania, it was held at one time that an attorney could not recover, without an express promise, anything beyond the trifling and totally inadequate sum provided in the fee-bill. That pure and eminent jurist Chief Justice Tilghman thought that the policy of refusing a legal remedy for anything beyond that had not been adopted without great consideration.[39] He stands not alone in the opinion that it has been neither for the honor nor profit of the Bar to depart from the ancient rule.[40] It has been departed from in this State, and the early decision overruled, however; and it must be frankly admitted, that the current of decisions in our sister States is in the same way.[41] It is supposed that the ancient rule was artificial in its structure, and practically unjust,--that it is wholly inconsistent with our ideas of equality to suppose that the business or profession, by which any one earns the daily bread of himself or of his family, is so much more honorable than the business of other members of the community as to prevent him from receiving a fair compensation for his services on that account.[42] It has been pronounced ridiculous to attempt to perpetuate a monstrous legal fiction, by which the hard-working lawyers of our day, toiling till midnight in their offices, are to be regarded in the eye of the law in the light of the patrician jurisconsults of ancient Rome, when ---- dulce diu fuit et solemne, reclusa Mane domo vigilare, clienti promere jura,-- and who at daybreak received the early visits of their humble and dependent clients, and pronounced with mysterious brevity the oracles of the law.[43]